IIMB doctoral student selected for prestigious UNU-WIDER Visiting PhD Fellowship
Gopinath Annadurai to advance his study on caste segregation and rural inequality in India
14 October, 2025, Bengaluru: Gopinath Annadurai, a doctoral programme student in the Public Policy area at IIM Bangalore, has been selected for the Visiting PhD Fellowship at the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), Helsinki. He joined the programme last month.
Gopinath’s research spans local governance, social stratification, and policy analysis. He is particularly interested in tracking structural transformations in social organisation, with a focus on how shifts in production systems, demographic patterns, and political institutions reshape collective life. At UNU-WIDER, he will pursue his project titled ‘India Lives in Her Hamlets: Asymmetric Caste Segregation in Rural India’. The study leverages census-scale data to build a nationwide portrait of intra-village caste segregation and examine its implications for rural inequality.
As a Visiting PhD Fellow, Gopinath is conducting research aligned with his doctoral dissertation at IIMB, deepening his exploration of the intersection between social structures and development policy.